


Mighty as the Sea

by greygerbil



Category: Dishonored (Video Games)
Genre: Friends With Benefits To Lovers, M/M, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-15
Updated: 2019-02-15
Packaged: 2019-10-20 23:12:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,159
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17631545
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greygerbil/pseuds/greygerbil
Summary: Samuel did not expect to fall as hard as he did for Corvo, and he didn't expect to see him again, either.





	Mighty as the Sea

**Author's Note:**

  * For [syrupwit](https://archiveofourown.org/users/syrupwit/gifts).



> Dear recip, I loved your prompts and I hope I managed to put something together that you like!

Samuel was not sure what Corvo saw in him, but he figured, things being as there were, it didn’t need to be much, aside from a warm body who had some friendly words ready. The Empress was dead and her heir lost; and, if gossip was to be believed, to Corvo it meant that the woman he’d loved had been butchered and his daughter had vanished. He’d spent six months in Coldridge Prison, a miserable and dark place, and worse now with the spymaster’s new torture chamber in place. Dunwall was overrun with rats and plague victims bleeding and crying and acting like rabid dogs as they clung to the last shreds of life. Broken windows stared black from deserted flats onto empty streets. Samuel couldn’t count how often his boat had gotten slowed down in the canals lately and when he’d reached down to push an old blanket or soggy crate out the way, he’d found a bloated corpse instead, disposed of like refuse.

Not surprising anyone would seek comfort in times like these, really.

Corvo moved under the cover of night and Samuel got him to where he needed to be, so when they were at the Hound Pits Pub, it was usually when the pale sun was in the sky. Corvo had a room on top of the building, but when he wasn’t sleeping, he preferred staying at Samuel’s little hut. He never spoke much when he sat with him, but then, he wasn’t a man of many words. Samuel sometimes talked of memories that came into his head, old stories, or of the other Loyalists, since it didn’t seem to bother Corvo to hear him prattle on. Corvo wasn’t insulted if he picked up a book to read, either, though. He’d looked at the adventure tales and travelogues over Samuel’s shoulder sometimes.

Samuel had been fond of Corvo from the moment of his escape from prison, where he’d managed to blow a door without killing a single person with the blast or on the way. The Admiral had wanted a weapon and Corvo did his bidding, but only as far as he felt necessary and never with the sharp edge at work. The Loyalists, they were decent people, Samuel figured, they wanted to help the city, which was why he’d thrown in with them. But Corvo – he was something else. Strong and smart enough that atrocities that seemed sadly necessary suddenly weren’t; that the idea that they could save an empress from the clutches of a man who had the whole of Dunwall in electric chains didn’t seem impossible anymore.

He didn’t usually go in for younger men, but Corvo was someone, Samuel reckoned, who could have won over most anyone with even a passing interest in men. How Corvo found out about it he didn’t know, mind. Being as old as he was, you learned not to let it show. Wouldn’t want an Overseer waiting for you in the haven one of these days. But Corvo seemed to know a lot of things he shouldn’t, about everyone, as Samuel found whenever Corvo did say a thing or two about their small group of conspirators. Samuel’s old grandma would have joked Corvo had the Outsider whispering in his ear. Of course, having seen the mark on his hand, Samuel wondered if it was true.

Any way it came about, Corvo kissed him one day as they sat by the seaside, looking out over the water, sharing a bottle of sour wine. He did it like a lover, one hand in the back of Samuel’s neck and the other on his hip, and he kissed well, but there seemed to be little he wasn’t talented at, so it wasn’t a surprise. They went up to his room that noon. Samuel figured if he’d been forty years younger and more handsome than he used to be even back then, it may have raised some eyebrows, but as it was, it didn’t matter. Who’d believe a boatsman would follow into the footsteps of an empress, anyway? Samuel didn’t believe it himself, and he was there for it as they embraced under the flimsy sheet.

They never did talk about the things that happened when the door was closed, but Samuel treasured the rare smiles on Corvo’s face, which was otherwise as hard to read as the mask he wore.

-

Samuel quite liked her ladyship Emily. She could be well-spoken and well-behaved if she wanted, but she was a little girl still, escaping her tutor at times, peering into all the nooks and corners of their hide-out, watching Piero and Sokolov from the door of the workshop, making Cecelia sing her rowdy songs from a childhood of the kind Emily hadn’t had, one spent barefoot and dirt-stained playing in back-alleys. It seemed natural and for that it was remarkable, showing an inner strength holding up against all the horror she’d witnessed.

Since there were a lot of people with better manners and education than him around, Samuel had not expected to have much to do with her, but Emily did find him sometimes, joining him when he sat outside his hut, much like Corvo would. She would leaf through the books and beg him for tall seaman’s tales, which Samuel told, though he wasn’t so sure he should be putting that sort of thing into a young lady’s head.

“She’s heard much worse to give her nightmares this last half year,” Corvo would say, when Samuel spoke of his worries. “I’d rather she’d be thinking of krakens and ghost ships.”

And one couldn’t argue with that, in truth.

Emily came to him again one mild evening while he sat outside his hovel carving a hagfish out of a piece of driftwood. He greeted her with a bow of his head as she took a curious look at the figurine.

“Aren’t you worried you’ll cut your fingers?” she asked.

“After the first few times, you’re not so shy of the pain,” Samuel explained, gaze on the faint, razor-thin scars that covered his hands. “But I won’t now, I think. It’s more difficult to hold a knife steady on a ship when the waves throw you about.”

“I see.” She leaned her head to the side. “Why are you making a fish?”

“It’s a hagfish. Corvo was talking about them last night, so I guess it put the idea in my head,” Samuel answered, truthfully. “They’re in the Wrenhaven River and they bite something fierce, so it’s best not to go into the water, your Ladyship.” Unlike Corvo, who had almost gotten his leg chewed off, but wouldn’t talk of what he’d actually been searching for on the muddy banks of the river. The man had many secrets.

Emily watched him to the sound of his scraping knife for a while before she sat up a little. “You like Corvo, don’t you?”

Samuel looked back at her, but though she was just a child, he could not see in her face if she was just asking a random question or had perhaps noticed just a little too much, being clever as she was.

“I think most everyone here likes Corvo, your Ladyship. He is a very good man.”

She wrapped a strand of hair around her finger as she considered this.

“What do you mean, ‘good man’?”

Well, at least this was definitely a child-like question. Always making you think too hard, the little tikes. He lowered his hands for a moment as he thought, stopping his work.

“Honourable. Respectable. Someone who cares about others even when it makes things a bit difficult and not just when it’s convenient to be friendly.”

For a moment, Emily stared over the sea. “Corvo says you’re nice and always helping him out. If I become good like him, perhaps people will help me, too. I might need a lot of help if I have to rule a kingdom.”

There was a little fear in her face now, though she chased it away with a shake of her head.

“Corvo speaks well of me, but I’m just a boatsman. I’m sure you’ll have much greater and stronger supporters, your Ladyship,” Samuel said softly. “You know, there might be something said for being cunning and lying, I’m sure. Those people seem to get ahead, don’t they? But in the end, I believe it always pays better to be decent, for other decent people will come to you, and those are the ones you can count on. That’s been my experience, anyway.”

There was the crunch of boots on the ground behind them. They both turned to look up at Corvo.

“There you are. Callista says it’s time for bed.”

“But I was talking to Samuel.”

Corvo gave her a stern look that cut any argument short. Sighing, Emily got up and brushed the dust off her white breeches.

“You make pretty carvings, Samuel,” she said, with a last look at the half-formed hagfish.

“Well, thanks. I can make you one if you’d like,” Samuel answered. It was what he’d offered any child he got to know if they showed interest, but as the words were out his mouth, it seemed somehow inappropriate, her being an empress and all, who would have the nicest toys from the havens around all the isles.

However, Emily smiled brightly.

“Can you make me a boat?” she asked.

“Of course, your ladyship.”

This seemed to be enough to satisfy her and get her to sprint off towards the pub. Corvo watched her until she had reached the entrance door.

Samuel felt suddenly a bit awkward. He didn’t know for how long Corvo had been listening in, hearing Samuel praise him, or what he thought of Samuel giving life advice to her Ladyship, like Samuel knew a thing about what it was like to be Empress.

“Begging your pardon,” he said, eventually, when Corvo just kept looking at him. “She asked me some things, so I just gave her my thoughts.”

“She’s hearing enough from the Pendletons of the world,” Corvo answered, as he sat down next to him. “It won’t be bad for her to have another perspective.”

He’d be a great Lord Protector for Emily, Samuel thought to himself, but she was a good kid to start with. Here was to hoping they could get her on the throne and Corvo wouldn’t die trying.

-

One evening, Samuel pulled on his breeches as Corvo laid stretched out on the bed, staring at the ceiling, still undressed.

“I wonder what became of my targets,” he said, into the silence.

Glancing over his shoulder, Samuel found himself mildly surprised. Corvo would tell him what he had done on the journey back to the Hound Pits Pub, but he very rarely reflected on his actions out loud, though Samuel fancied he could see him think about them when his face grew clouded and the only sound between them was the splash and creak of the boat gliding through the water.

“What do you mean?”

“I found a way to keep them alive, but sometimes, it felt like a clean kill would have been more merciful than my alternatives. Now I keep thinking what has happened to them.”

“I figure… as long as there’s life, there’s hope. Even if a couple of them had it coming, if you excuse my saying so, if they don’t make it out again. But I understand if that’s not something you want to sit in judgement over. It speaks well of you that you don’t forget about them, anyway.” Involunatrily, his eyes flitted to the mark on Corvo’s hand. “I admit, I wouldn’t want to have to make your choices.”

Corvo had seen the glance, quick as it had been, and sat up. There was suspicion in his eyes. It was not a way he had looked at Samuel ever before, and Samuel didn’t much like it; but if he was right about that tattoo, then he couldn’t fault him, either.

“What?” Samuel asked.

Corvo flexed his hand.

“Do you know what this is?”

“I’ve seen it once before,” Samuel admitted, after a brief pause, sitting down on the edge of the bed, “on a pirate captain who raided a boat I was hired on before the coast Tyvia, by Samara. They called him the Storm’s Shadow. Moved so fast and walked so silent he took over the ship before most men knew he was even on board... and before we’d had a chance to surrender, he’d slit the throats of half the crew and stuffed them in cupboards and under machinery.” He hesitated. “They told me it was the Outsider’s mark, later… could just be another sailor’s story, of course.”

Corvo’s silence was as good as an admission and though it wasn’t a particularly cold day, Samuel felt a shiver run down his spine as the hair on his arms stood.

“Yet you’re here,” Corvo said. “Even though you knew?”

“You haven’t cut any throats I’m aware of. So you’re not like the Storm’s Shadow, are you?” Samuel hesitated again. “Well… I might be saying nonsense. What does a man like me know about religion, anyway, or about the Outsider? I’ve seen lots of things out on the sea the Abbey of the Everyman doesn’t account for, though – nothing against the Overseers, but it’s true. You have this mark and you don’t kill, and the Storm’s Shadow had it and did. How’s that so different from two men with guns, one who shoots and one who keeps his finger off the trigger?”

There was a long silence. Samuel wondered if Corvo thought what he’d said was very foolish.

“The Outsider would like you, I think,” Corvo finally answered, with a slim smile.

Samuel stared at him now.

“You’ve met him?”

“I don’t know. Some part of him, in my dreams and at old shrines. But he’s always said that it’s my decision to do as I see fit with what he gave me – I think he finds it interesting to watch and not know beforehand.” Corvo cocked his head, just the way Emily sometimes did. “In a way, you share his opinion.”

Samuel swallowed.

“Don’t know if that’s a good thing, then…”

Corvo gave a huff of a breath and pulled Samuel close with an arm around his shoulders. It was a tender gesture, lacking the tension of his first moment of shock, and Samuel thought that maybe Corvo was glad to be out with it. It wasn’t a topic many people would have been comfortable discussing, he supposed. “I doubt you’d be happy watching me carve my way through this town if that were the choice I made. That’s the difference.”

“I’d certainly hope I wouldn’t be,” Samuel said. He looked over at the ground by the side of the bed, where Corvo’s belongings were stacked. “Say… your – friend, is that the reason you have all these bone charms? I’ve wondered about those. You’ve more of these things than most sailors I know and that’s saying something. I know the Overseers aren’t too fond of them…”

“He gave me something that helps me find them and know their powers.” Corvo hesitated. “Would you take one from me?”

A bone charm that the Outsider had picked out – well, that was some gift. But of course, the Outsider had also picked out Corvo and Samuel was just fine with him. Anyway, he doubted Corvo would put him in danger and it wasn’t like he hadn’t owned half a hundred of these things in his life, not quite knowing more than the power his fellow men at sea claimed they had.

“If you can spare one,” he answered.

Corvo looked grateful, though he was the one giving the present. He dug through the stack of charms.

“This should keep you healthy,” he said, handing Samuel one.

Samuel rubbed his fingers over it, feeling bone that had been polished smooth by years of use, before he pushed it in the breast pocket of his waist coat. If he was feeling a little livelier, it was probably just for the pleased look Corvo was giving him, though.

-

In the end, things went alright, in some sense of the word. Emily was the Empress and Corvo was at her side. Poor Wallace and Lydia had died for it, but at least Cecelia and Callista were safe. The Loyalists – who had done enough to make sure they didn’t deserve that name – had mostly taken care of themselves and though Samuel hated to be resentful, he was glad for it.

With the Empress restored, Corvo had made sure that Piero and Sokolov had the resources to work on their cure, and mad as they seemed to him, Samuel was pretty sure if anyone could do it, it was them. In the last weeks, workers had started to take down the Walls of Light around the city, these terrible, crackling monstrosities that could punish with death a drunken man on his way home for stumbling over an uneven cobblestone. No Tall Boys stalked through the streets anymore like cats through a nest of mice.

In a few years, perhaps things would be back to normal for the city. Samuel wondered if the same could be true for himself.

He still lived in his little hovel by the Hound Pits Pub, which Cecelia had taken over with no one to tell her no left. She didn’t mind him there in the front, and she didn’t ask why he wasn’t going home, probably on account of her place being in the flooded district and simply assuming Samuel must have lost his, too. Truth was, he just hadn’t had one in a while. A boat could be a pretty good bed for one who liked to feel the rhythm of the waves and he didn’t own a lot of things, anyway. He hadn’t really thought of any fixed place as his true home in years and years, and he doubted he’d start now, when it felt like something had been cut out the middle of him.

Yes, this loneliness inside of him was new, but it wasn’t like he’d expected Corvo to stick around. He had more important things to worry about and that had been clear from the first. This wasn’t the kind of thing that lasted and in the end he guessed he was happy to just have provided him with some distraction when he most needed it. Samuel also missed little Emily with her easy smiles and unbroken will, but she had an empire to run. 

But that was life, wasn’t it? The best you could hope for, most times, was to become a good memory to someone. So why could he not tell his heart to let go, having always known he’d have to?

He was sorry that he’d not managed to finish that little boat for her Ladyship in time, anyway; it was done now, but now it didn’t matter. Though she’d probably long forgotten about it, he didn’t like not keeping his promises. Though no one would come to claim it, it still sat by his bedside. Often enough, he would also touch his breast pocket, where the bone charm that Corvo had given him always rested. That cough he’d brought back from Morley some ten years ago had abated somewhat. Maybe it was coincidence, or maybe the Outsider’s blessing was working. It was as good as any an excuse not to get rid of the thing, he figured, if he was all the way honest wth himself. He was just holding on to it because it was from Corvo, in the end. Stupid, really, to be this wound-up about someone after a few weeks, but he figured Corvo was just the kind of person who could bewitch you like that.

The pain wouldn’t go away even as the weeks piled on.

The last time he’d hurt this badly over a man – or a boy, to be true, for they’d both been sixteen and while he’d of course been convinced he was a man grown then, that seemed so young now at sixty –, Samuel had gone to sea. That was a trick that only worked once, he’d wager. Corvo had taken his thoughts off boats with ease.

Might still do him good to hire on somewhere regardless, he considered one evening, not for the first time, as he stared out over the sea at the ships in the distance. Just to get his mind off things in the waking hours, and leave the city, where it was too easy to turn your eyes to Dunwall Tower. He didn’t like whalers much these days, though. The groans of the poor creatures strung up over the deck followed you into your sleep…

A hand grabbed his shoulder firmly. Samuel jumped and whipped his head around. He found himself staring at the Lord Protector.

“You’re going to give an old man a heart attack,” he managed, after a few stunned seconds of silence. Corvo often moved so quietly you only knew he was there when he stood in front of your nose, but this time, it felt like he’d climbed right out of Samuel’s head. Then again, Samuel had been thinking about him a lot lately, so he guessed his odds had been pretty good to find him doing just that.

“I’m sorry I wasn’t around. A lot of things had to be set right in the Tower before I could leave Emily and Callista on their own.”

“Yes, of course.”

Corvo let go off him and stood by his side at the shore. 

“I wanted to speak to you again,” Corvo said gravely.

That sounded like goodbye, Samuel thought, with a sudden twist of his stomach. Maybe it shouldn’t surprise him Corvo would come to give a formal end to it. He wasn’t the sort to leave people hanging. Fair of him, really; and yet, Samuel suddenly felt like he couldn’t bear to hear it.

“Wait,” he said, and ducked down into his small shelter, where he picked up the little boat. “I promised the girl to make this, so… if you could give it to her when you return?”

Since Samuel pressed it in his hand, Corvo had no chance but to take the boat. He turned it between his fingers.

“She’ll be happy, but I think you should give it to her yourself. It’s your gift to her.”

“I doubt she’ll be coming to the Hound Pits Pub,” Samuel said with half a smile.

“Why not when the streets are safer? Of course, at the moment…”

Corvo dug into his pocket and pulled out a thick envelope made of thick, heavy paper. Samuel frowned at it. His name was scrawled across the front.

“What’s this?”

“A document that will grant you passage into Dunwall Tower,” Corvo said. “Without you, I wouldn’t have survived and Emily wouldn’t be on the throne. I trust you more than most of my guardsmen at the moment. There’s no reason you can’t visit us… if you want to.”

There was a note of uncertainty in his voice and Samuel found himself at a loss for words. If anything was going to get to his heart, it was probably the way it was banging on now like a drum.

“I didn’t really think you’d still, well, with me…”

“Of course I do,” Corvo answered, like there had never been any question about it.

What Samuel really wanted to do was grab Corvo and kiss him, but there was still some reason left in him.

“For my sake, I guess it’s daft I’m trying to talk you out of it, but I’m just an old sailor. Give me ten years, I’ll be gone. I don’t want to be around just to cause you heart-ache.”

“Jessamine was younger than me and she’s gone. You could be dragged under the waves or catch the rat plague tomorrow, and little as I want to admit, chances are there’d be nothing I could do about it.” Corvo turned his gaze back to the sea. “Everybody dies eventually. We’re alive now.”

That they were, and quite a miracle that was, too. Samuel brushed his thumb along the edge of the envelope and then pocketed it, telling himself that one shouldn’t question good luck so much or it’d look for someplace else to go.

“I guess we should get that boat to her Ladyship then. Best not to keep an empress waiting. And in case you need safe passage back to Dunwall Tower… I’ve brought you there before.”

Corvo wound his fingers into the short strands of Samuel’s hair and pulled him in gently for a kiss. The cold, salty wind rushed off the sea and a thin rain beat down on them as they embraced, but Samuel felt warm, like he was full of glowing embers, sparked by the touch of Corvo’s lips on his.


End file.
